


Broken Notes in Constant Song

by for_t2



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anxiety, Bars and Pubs, Chemistry, Dark Fantasy, Demons, F/F, Fear, Horror, Ice Wine, Jazz - Freeform, Love at First Sight, Piano, Running Away, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-17
Updated: 2020-01-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:07:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22285336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/for_t2/pseuds/for_t2
Summary: The more you run, the more there are things to run from, even if you find someone to run with
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Broken Notes in Constant Song

Flickering lights in the dead of night are always a bad idea. Even if they don’t seem it at the time. Even if everything else in the world seems like a worse idea. Even – especially – if you just need to run. And tonight, in the gentle cold of drifting snow, there was nothing that Nathalie felt more than the need to run.

Tomorrow morning, in hours that would fly by too quickly, as the winter sun would just be starting to rise, she would step into the sterile white room and take her seat amidst row after row of desks. Everyone in her class had their own way of preparing. Some stuffed their noses into their books, desperate to cram any last bit of knowledge into their skulls. Others preferred meditation and a simple last meal.

But Nathalie just need to run. To escape. To get away from her pounding heart, from the blurring pages of text, her twitching fingers worn tired by endless pen strokes.

It’s not that she was scared of the exam, not that she was scared of chemistry, because, of course, that would be ridiculous. It’s just that, after a while, it just didn’t make sense anymore. Autoprotolysis, valence bond, van ‘t Hoff, Beer-Lambert, molarity and molality, enthalpy and entropy, K and Ksp and Kp and Ka and Kw and… names and theories and equations just swimming together in a sea of chemical nonsense.

She just needed to run. Nowhere in particular, no specific goal in mind, just to run. To feel the gravel crunch under her feet, to feel the wet snowflakes dripping down her cheeks, to feel something different, something that was anywhere but here.

But even running slows eventually. As far as the towering buildings of glass and stone stretched, as far as the glow of the streetlights reached, eventually there’s nowhere left to go.

But Nathalie wasn’t ready. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but definitely not now.

So she ducked into the first open door she saw, under a neon purple sign in the heart of the city, hurried down the cracked concrete stairs, and headed right through the crowd and onto the first empty seat at the bar.

“What’ll it be?” She barely had the time to catch her breath before the bartender glided up to her.

“Um…” She wasn’t really a bar type of girl. Not really an alcohol type of girl. Too expensive and it made her brain all foggy and she just didn’t want to have to make any decisions. Not right now. “What do you have?”

“You name it.” The bartender poured a drink, some deep blue liquid with a touch of ice, and sent it sliding down the other end of the bar. “We got your classics, your neo-classics, your retros, your neo-retros, your neos, neo-neos, whatever.” They studied Nathalie, dark eyes a colour she couldn’t quite a catch. “You like look a Sirl blood and maple scotch type of human to me.”

“Huh?” She had asked the question, but she hadn’t really payed attention to the answer. Wasn’t paying attention to anything, really. A part of her was terrified that, if she tried to focus, her attention would end up exactly where she didn’t want it – on the exam she knew she was going to fail.

The bartender grinned, almost predatory. “You’re new here, aren’t you?” They grabbed a bottle and poured a glass. “Ice wine. First glass on the house.”

“What about…” The fancy shit. The shit that sounded stronger than just plain old wine.

The bartender pushed the glass towards her. “Find the music first.” They winked, subtly pushing the glass a little closer, then slide away to sweep up empty glasses from drinkers Nathalie hadn’t seen.

Find the music first. She almost repeated their words, in the sarcastic mutter that used to make her voice sparkle with life. Maybe next time she caught the bartender’s attention, after the drink soothed her exhaustion. Instead, she took a sip and turned to face the rest of the room.

The music caught her almost instantly. The jazz ensemble on the far side of the bar, almost forlorn in their corner of the bar, played with an intensity she wasn’t sure she had even heard before. The low thrumming of the bass vibrating through her soul, the saxophone swirling around her, the drums carrying her away in their rhythm, and the piano…

It wasn’t the way the pianist’s dark brown hair curled into the shadows, it wasn’t the way the fabric of her suit framed her shoulders or her muscles, it wasn’t the way her fingers danced across the keys with an almost hardened grace. It was the pure, piercing emotion she put into every note, leading the song, shaping it into something more than just notes. Into something with a life of its own.

It was entrancing.

*

Nathalie didn’t realise she had gotten lost in the music until she felt the touch on her arm.

“You’re different.” She startled out of her reverie, following the direction of the touch until the face of the pianist. The pianist. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Um.” The misfiring in Nathalie’s brain, usually so familiar, made her nerves tense. She peered down at her almost empty glass, the bar lights refracting through the wine almost like moonlight through cracked ice. She was pretty sure this wasn’t her first glass. Pretty sure. “You’re really pretty.”

Nathalie almost died in embarrassment at the small shrug the pianist gave her. “That’s what they say.” She waved at the bartender. “That’s what they’ve always said.”

“I didn’t mean…” She tried to recover her footing. Tried to push the shame down. Focus on something else. “I meant you’re really good. At the piano.”

“I know,” the pianist sighed. Nathalie couldn’t quite place her accent – maybe some type of French? In any case, she found herself surprisingly eager to hear more of it. It was almost as lovely as the music.

“I’m Nat.” Nathalie stuck out an awkward hand as the bartender slid a couple of fresh drinks their way. “You’re really good.”

The pianist ignored her hand. “Why are you here?”

“I just needed a drink.”

“That’s it?”

Nathalie forced herself not to stumble over her words, not to shrink from the edge hidden behind the question. “That’s it.”

“Oh.” The pianist glanced back towards the stairs in what seemed like disappointment before taking a big gulp of her drink. “Where are you from, Nathalie?” She asked, softer, friendlier.

“Stockholm.” Originally from a small town on the other side of the country, but as far as Nathalie was concerned, she was from the city. It was the place where she felt freest, where the possibilities felt greater than the problems. “I’m just a student.”

“Sounds fun.” Nathalie let out a snort at that. It’s funny how sometimes, a sentence can be so true yet so wrong at the same time. “It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to play for someone like you.”

“Like me?” She barely had time to wonder what exactly that meant, barely had time to let her curiosity ignite, before the pianist had downed her drink and got up. “Wait!” Nathalie jumped up after the pianist. “You never told me your name.”

The pianist stepped closer to her. Closed her eyes. “Shh.” Placed a single finger on her lips. “Can you hear it?”

“Hear…” Nathalie shut up. Closed her eyes like the pianist. Listened.

In the fringes of sound, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from right next to her and from the other side of the room, a whisper, a chorus of whispers, cut through the ambience of the crowd, caressing her ear, creeping up the back of her neck, growing louder, more urgent with every passing second, crawling towards her.

“…what?”

“The song’s not over.”

By the time Nathalie opened her eyes again, the pianist was gone, back to her piano, the melody filling the air again.

* 

When Nathalie raised her glass, nothing came. It was empty. She didn’t…

She didn’t remember the last time it had been empty, and only vaguely remembered the refills along the way. She didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember the time. And, she realised, there were no clocks in the bar.

“I’m terribly sorry.” The bartender plucked the glass out of her hands. “I hadn’t noticed you were running dry.”

“Wait.” Nathalie reached out to try and stop them from pouring her a new glass. “What…” The panic was starting to rise from her stomach again. “What time is it?”

“Whatever time you want,” the bartender chuckled. They searched the shelves and found a new bottle. “Maybe it’s time to try something new.”

“No, I can’t, I’ve got an exam.” She should feel sick. This much alcohol should make her feel sick. It always does. And she can’t be sick before an exam. Can’t be sick ever, but especially not before an exam. “I can’t.”

The bartender poured a glass anyway, mixing a few drops of deep red into amber. “Bigger things to worry about, darling.”

“But…”

They slid the glass over to her. “Everyone pays with their own price.”

Nathalie pushed the glass back. “I really have to go.” Stood up.

Stopped.

She didn’t want to move. Somewhere at the bottom of her legs, her feet felt like they were wading through slush. Her hand almost reached back towards the glass. The thought of her exam was a needle hovering right in front of her face, a single step away from running her through, impaling what was left of the rest of her thoughts.

And the music, the music she had been listening to for what must’ve been hours, still sounded like nothing she had ever heard before. Nothing she ever wanted to stop listening to. And…

“She’s beautiful, eh?” The bartender said as Nathalie slumped back onto her stool.

“Yeah.” The word slipped breathlessly from her. “Beautiful.”

“Sometimes,” the bartender kept their hand around Nathalie’s drink, almost as if they were on the verge of drinking it themselves. “I wish there was another way.”

“Yeah.” Nathalie wasn’t sure what she was agreeing to, but she agreed.

For a few moments, she sat there in silence, the bartender leaning against the counter behind her. Finally, they handed her the drink. “No one deserves to be alone.”

Nathalie grabbed her drink as soon as the bartender wandered off. She took a big gulp, letting the warmth burn its way down her throat, the flavour prickle her tongue. But when she turned her attention away from it, letting it drift back towards the pianist, the warmth flipped in her stomach.

She hadn’t really paid any attention to the crowd in the bar, the people sharing the music with her. She didn’t really have a reason to. But now, as her eyes drifted across them, she couldn’t focus. It didn’t feel blurry, didn’t feel wrong, but still, it was like she couldn’t get the world to snap into focus.

And in the moments when her attention was drifting, caught neither by the drinks or the music, it turned, almost lured, to the corners. To the shadows. To the whispers lurking forward. To the headache beginning to pound in the depths of her head.

It was only the sound of the piano, the notes of a broken solo, that drew her back.

* 

As soon as the music stopped, Nathalie felt it. The small surge in energy, the brief flicker of the lights, the ever-encroaching whispers.

“Have you ever made a deal with the devil?”

Nathalie had no problems seeing the pianist. She stood out so easily, so clearly, even if there was a stiffness, a stiltedness to the way she moved. Even if it seemed almost wrong. “Have you?”

“It’s what the song’s called.” The pianist chuckled, more to herself than anything. “There is no devil.” Downed her drink faster than the last. « Y en a de beaucoup pires. »

“I’m sorry, I don’t—”

“You should go.”

“But…” Nathalie jumped up after the pianist. Grabbed her hand. “I want to hear the rest of your song.”

“You really should go.” But the pianist didn’t move. Didn’t slip her hand out of Nathalie’s.

“At least let me hear about you.” The exam was all but forgotten about. What mattered now was her. “I meant it when I said you were beautiful.”

The pianist said nothing for a few seconds, glancing once at the bartender. “Chapleau.” She shifted the tiniest bit closer to Nathalie. “It’s where I’m running from.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really remember,” she shrugged. “I’ve been here for so long.”

“Here?” Nathalie tried to put the pieces together. Tried to come up with a hypothesis, to come up with something to make sense of her curiosity. “Where exactly is here?”

“Shh.” The pianist didn’t need to put her finger to Nathalie’s lips this time, especially when their lips were already so close. “There are worlds between worlds.” Close enough for their lips to graze each other. “And monsters that wait outside the worlds, scratching to get in.”

The bartender’s cough interrupted them. “The show’s not over.”

“Monsters.” It had only been a few minutes since the pianist left her stage. Time enough for the whispers to grow to the point of a hum, for the pain to start twisting deep inside her skull.

“Go.” The pianist slipped her hand away. Gave Nathalie the gentlest of shoves. “Find another world.”

“But—”

“You should listen to her.” The bartender cut in, their eyes darting from one side of the bar to the other, wiping the glass between their hands clean and clean again.

“But…” Nathalie stopped thinking. Grabbed the pianist. Kissed her. “Not without you.”

“I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“You said we could find our own world.” Nathalie didn’t want to let go of her. They needed to run. “If—”

A set of keys landed on the ground next to her. “Take the backdoor.” The bartender kept their voice as urgently even as possible. “Just remember that not all demons are monsters.” They only had eyes for the pianist. “Please.”

The pianist hesitated. Until the ceiling cracked.

“Now.” The bartender gave up on the glass. Took a bottle, a swig for themselves, as the crack turned into two.

The pianist shut her eyes. Held on to Nathalie’s hand as if it was all the world. Nodded. “We need to run.”


End file.
